Seventy-five percent of the Arab public in Israel
believes that the military operation in Lebanon
was a war crime and the people responsible should be brought to justice, a survey conducted by the Mada al-Carmel Arab Center for Applied Social Research revealed.
The survey, which was conducted among a representative sample of the Arab population in Israel, found that 32 percent of the participants think that Israel is responsible for starting the war. Forty-three percent think that the cause of the war was not the soldiers' kidnapping and that Israel would have started the war in any case.
The survey was conducted a week after the cease-fire and was intended to examine the Arab stance on different issues of the war. About 500 people participated in the survey.
The survey found that 58 percent of the Arab public believes that neither Hizbullah
nor Israel won the war. Thirty-four percent believe Hizbullah won and only three percent think that Israel won. Regarding the possibility of another such confrontation, 43 percent assume that Israel would hesitate before initiating further military actions against Nasrallah
and his army.
Regarding the relations between Arabs and Jews in the country, the survey exposes more sinister facts: Thirty-two percent believe the
war caused a disintegration of the relationship between Arabs and Jews, 23 percent say that government policies towards the Arab population will only worsen, and 35 percent said that the attitude of the Arab public towards the Jewish one became more negative following the war. The same amount of people said the same is true for the attitude of the Jewish public.
Regarding the Arab public's main source of information on the development of the war, 67 percent of the Arabs in Israel said they tuned into Arabic television networks, compared to 23 percent who watched Israeli ones.
Sixty-four percent said they watched al-Jazeera, and rated it as being highly credible. Forty-six percent said they relied on al-Manar's reports, the channel which identifies with Hizbullah. Only 5 percent said the news on the Israeli network Channel One was credible, and 10 percent said the two other commercial Israeli channels (Two and 10) were credible.
On the other hand, 55 percent of the respondents rated Hizbullah's reports of the war as more credible than the Israeli ones. Only nine percent believed the opposite.
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